`Pastime’ won’t disappoint

PASTIME, by Robert B. Parker, Putnam, 223 pages, $19.95.

“My fortune was … to be partaker of the common woe.” — Edmund Spenser, poet

I have to blame Ken Coleman for my passion for Robert Parker detective novels.

You remember Ken. He’s the former Boston Red Sox radio and television announcer, and I remember the night he got me started on all this Spenser stuff.

It was August. Presque Isle. A rainy night. You could smell the potato blossoms after the cold drops hit them.

Hold it. I’m starting to sound like this guy. I’m sorry. And special apologies to other fans of Spenser, the literate, compassionate — but — tough private eye from Boston. That’s Spenser with an s, like the poet.

Broadcaster Coleman loved Spenser, and he often would reverently bring up his latest exploits — as told by Parker — while on the air when a particular moment during a Red Sox game gave cause for a Spenserism or two.

For 18 wonderfully, delirious reading years, Parker, the former literature professor, has given his fans the trials and tribulations of America’s favorite private detective.

The author’s latest installment in the Spenser series is “Pastime,” and it does nothing to diminish his lofty status among those who consider Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald and, of course, Robert B. Parker, to be the greatest fictional practitioners of the fine art of detective writing.

This time around, Parker sends the redoubtable PI back on an old case in search of Paul Giacomin’s mother. (Parker fans remember young Giacomin as the lad raised by Spenser 10 years ago during the bitter divorce proceedings between his parents, chronicled in “Early Autumn.”)

Paul is now 25, out on his own, and he begs Spenser to help him find and rescue his mother from her latest boyfriend of ill repute.

This is vintage Parker. The sights, sounds and smells of Boston are all there. Spenser’s unflappable companion, Hawk, joins the chase, as does his beautiful and witty love, Susan Silverman.

Parker’s talent is his capacity to link each Spenser case to the next, and the real problem with this type of fiction — problem for the reader only — is waiting for the next adventure in print.

The wait can be excruciating.

“Pastime” will not disappoint, and Spenser and crew emerge victorious again, all while teaching the villains and the victims moral lessons in human’s inherent responsibility to fellow humans during our brief time on this planet.

As Spenser might put it: “It’s like carpentry — I get pleasure out of making things right.”

Ron Brown is a free-lance writer who resides in Bangor.